Flying Cat!

"I have lived with several zen masters, all of them cats."-Eckart Tolle

 

My kitten can fly  He does not know that cats cannot fly, so he launches himself off of just about any high place, apparently assuming he will go where he wishes. And he usually does! 

 

Wilbur is light and muscular and seems to be threaded with elastic and rubber. He leaps without hesitation or regard to what is below, but only toward the object of his desire. 

 

He kind of spreads out flat in midair, as if for aerodynamic effect. He slides, does rolling landings, and then skitters straight up objects as if they were horizontal! 

 

He comes flying into the room, up the wall, across the air, bounces off the chair, and out of the room again, before you can even look up.

 

He can leap and catch the ball I throw in midair. The whole body, the whole being, shoots gracefully through the air, as one, unified missile of purpose. He can leap so effortlessly over the dog that he appears to float for a moment and land as if he had no weight at all. 

 

I watch admiringly and learn, from this cat person, of the power of coherent intention and pure concentration.

 

"There is, incidentally, no way of talking about cats that enables one to come off as a sane person."

-Dan Greenberg

  

The End of Politics

The universe is not a hierarchy. It is a jungle-wild fractal swirliarchy. - Omni

 

(From the Book of Unitics, From Politics to Unitics, The End of Politics:)

Tired of politics? Play the Unitics Game!

When I love you, and myself, and all of us, when I take all of us into consideration when I do something, and when you do this as well, and enough others do too, we can decide about community things in cooperation, without disputation, because we all care about each one of us. Politics withers away.

The process is personal as well as political, from the task at hand, the success of the feminist revolution, all the way on into the cocreation of a new collaborative love based society. This will be the stage in which society has managed to transcend politics, and has graduated to deciding public policy together, by means of Unitics.

 

Sounds good in theory, but how does unitics work in real life? How does it look? 

Perhaps it starts with one's own outlook. 

Appreciating all of the gifts we have received from others. 

Perhaps a realization that we absolutely need each other. 

Maybe an assumption that the other person means well and what they are doing makes sense to them.

 Just walking around intending general goodwill.

 Noticing when we are "othering" someone.

It is simply a matter of loving intention, leading to good faith communication, leading to trusting one another to have the other person's highest good paramount, and everyone really taking this to heart.

 

We can do this well already in small groups, such as the couple, or in some family relationships, in true friendships, perhaps some creative or monastic groups, but the larger the group, the trickier it can be. Fortunately, the information revolution makes communication easy, so we can know more about, and connect with, people who seem different from us. 

When we get to know others, we will feel more able to widen that kinship and love relationship circle to all people, all beings, and all life. This is the common ground of unitics. As we disarm our psychic barriers we will remember this is also the most natural and ancient way to live together.

 

When a critical mass of people routinely make each and every decision, from the ordinary everyday ones, to the most profound life changing ones, based on their most sincere awareness of what is in the highest good of all life everywhere forever, we can awaken to a society that is ready to govern itself with Unitics.

 

Until then, we shall be saddled with politics, the contending for power between perceived separate interests, and thus the need to win the feminist revolution. Politics is hectic, painful and pathetic, but it will be with us until the end of the age. Even now, though, unitics consciousness is emerging and eventually will replace politics. So why not start now, because as soon as you want to, you can join in our evolution.

And remember this is a fun game. Everyone is already a winner, and all must have prizes! Because until everyone is self actualized, we are still in process toward even a really good glimpse of our collective or synergistic potential. I wonder what a world of considerate, happy, harmonious, creative, self actualized people would be like.

 

"I often say jokingly that a truly selfish person must be altruistic!

 You have to take care of others, of their well-being, by helping them and serving them, to have even more friends and make more smiles blossom. The result? When you yourself need help, you will find all you need! On the other hand, if you neglect others’ happiness, you will be the loser in the long run."

-The Dalai Lama

Vegan Eggs?

"There are 3 inescapable problems we all face:

1. How to win food and shelter

2.  How to get along with others.

3.  How to relate to the total scheme of things.

If we deal with the 3rd one first, the other two get answered." -Houston Smith

 

I try to make lifestyle choices that cause as little harm to other beings as possible. This is veganishness.  I realize that it's impossible to live on Earth without causing any harm at all. 

 

The very roads we travel cause habitat loss, the walls and paint of the houses we live in contain dead animal products, even this computer I write on has an impact. If you even breathe, you kill microbes.. 

But to proceed in a veganish way through the world, I take into account the whole picture at each choice point. 

 

Let's consider the backyard chicken. Some people don't think eggs can even be a vegan food, but they can be a veganish food if done right. Nobody has to die to make eggs. Here is my definition: 

First, chickens live fifteen years, but only lay eggs daily for about three years. So there must be a commitment to the chickens' well being for their whole life, and their living conditions must be happy and healthy for them.

 

Next, chickens lay eggs even when there are no roosters around, so these eggs amount to well, chicken menstruation. But even if you have roosters around fertilizing the eggs, if you simply don't allow them to be incubated to hatching out chicks, you can avoid ever having those extra roosters that farmers are temped to put into the soup pot. 

If you do want chicks, many people can tell pretty accurately which eggs contain male vs female chicks by the shape of the eggs. Female chicks come from rounder eggs; male chick eggs look more oblong. 

 

There is a really good reason for eating eggs if you generally do not eat any meat or dairy or fish, and that is to get those awesome omega 3's that are so good for your brain and all. It has been many decades since I had meat or fish and I don't want to get demented!

So in order to get our veganish omegas, we have just gotten chickens!! They have a chicken tractor. This is a mobile coop with egg laying boxes inside, and no floor. You pull it around on its wheels, across the land to fresh pastures each day, so the chickens can find fresh grass, herbs and bugs. 

 

Our chickens are out tractoring now, happily pecking, scratching, and making contented humming and clucking sounds. As for me, I like it that I can feed and move them in the middle of the day, because I'm not a crack of dawn person. 

 

They are safe and happy in their fresh and changing environment, and the big veganish dog notices the commotion if any predators come near. Out here in the country, the life force is strong. We have cougars, bears, raccoons, foxes, coyotes, and many kinds of hawks and eagles.

 

We feed our pet birds flax seeds and all organic feed and fruit and veggie treats. I'm planning their forage meadow garden, to be from a special plant seed mix that chickens like, for next year. I've heard you can even sprout their seeds for them. I sprinkle a happy chicken dried herb and flower mix in with the hay of the chicken coop. It smells nice in there. 

After only two days, they already are relaxed enough to eat out of my hand! And they have started to lay eggs!

I wonder if we will be having cake around here soon...

  

 

"whole system interliving"  -Jean Houston

Embracing the Grey

“Do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles and the water is clear?” -Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

 

(From Omni's color collection, see other colors highlighted elsewhere:)

This day is grey. The future seems grey to me today also. My mood is grey, so I speak of this shade today. I set out to go about my day, but suddenly I stop.

 

 Autumn rains are soaking the forest around me now. Everything is cloaked in grey today, the sky, the trees, the air in between. The atmosphere swirls with water in many moods as well, ranging from rain, to windy almost-hail, to tiny gravity defying droplets gently suspended in the air, to being so completely encased in the cloud that all I can see at noon is an even, dismal, shade blanket between me and my remembered warm, bright, beloved daystar.

 

Grey reminds me of the level of our perception in which we use shadows to reveal the light, and light to reveal what is real. Grey is an acknowledgement of complexity, even an acceptance of a role for the dark in our path to understanding.

 

If you mix all of the colors together, as I found out as very young artist while mixing clay, you get grey. Grey does not bring clarity, it brings dimness. I ponder the presumed value of unclarity.

 

 I recently heard an old grey woman extolling the virtues of aging. She says forgetting can be a gift, making more room in one's attention for now. And she says her poor eyesight makes the world more beautiful because everything looks softer.

  

 If fall is a time of the warm colors of the harvest slowly fading, then the result would be brown turning to grey, the color that beckons the winter snow. This grey is a shadow that falls like a curtain upon the land, only to bring the glittering crystal snow beacon of the coming newborn solstice light. 

 

 

And so I sit here today enveloped in a comfortable modern cocoon, ensconced in a swirl of mostly symbolic grey, meditating on the apparent need for the color grey. 

 

 

Or the non color grey, because without color, grey is the very definition of the absence of color. But as an artist I know that the proverbial many shades of grey are often merely darkened colors, veiled with earthy duff and stuff. To make a shade, you darken a color. 

 

Anyway, if grey had no color, why do I get the blues when it's like this outside? So we nervous creatures feverishly pad our centrally heated cave this season and festoon it with lights, to chase away the menacing gloom. 

 

But first, I pause. I sit very still and ask what it is I really need to do. I listen deeply for that still and small voice. All around things are falling, dying. All of this returns to dust, I observe. 

 

 

I consider all of things we do, the things we make, accomplish, acquire. I ask why and if all of the things we run around chasing after all year long are so important. 

 

I sit just there in the grey, waiting for the inner guidance that I believe always comes whenever I ask, listen, and wait. I know that the moment when I get the inspiration, I will enthusiastically rise up and joyfully go do the next thing. I wonder...

 

You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather. -Pema Chodron

 

Tidying to Save the World

(From the Flower Child's Garden Planet)

"Believe what your heart tells you when you ask, 'Does this spark joy?'"-Marie Kondo

Tidying?! You must be kidding, right? How can some girly art of neatness do anything important?

I'm studying by book with a Japanese "tidying master" this month. The teaching is that if you learn to keep your physical space in order, your life will follow, and so, on out into the world. 

Does this spark joy? 

 

This is what the master advises one ask oneself. If yes, you need only decide, in an eventual but later step, at the end, where it will live. (Yes, each thing is alive with its own spirit and has its own preferences in this system of philosophy.) 

So I drill down deep into my feelings about each and every object, one at a time, holding it in my two hands, perhaps even smelling it (!) 

 

But first, you pile all of your stuff into a heap on the floor. Then lift up each thing you would like to keep because it sparks joy. In this way, you develop a new skill, that of homing in on what brings you that pleasure spark. It's not about getting rid of stuff, but embracing the things you love.

If it does not pass the joy test, you thank the object for what it has given you, and let it go. You come to realize you may have kept a thing around because of fear that maybe in the future you might need it, even though you never use it. If your parents suffered scarcity and did not have enough to meet their basic needs, you may have unconsciously imprinted attitudes you weren't even aware of. Maybe keeping more than you will ever need of this or that reflects this basic need for security. 

These fears usually reside in our beliefs about the past or the future, because in the present we obviously have enough. Nor is this dysfunctional scarcity thinking restricted to persons suffering actual lack. People of every wealth and income category tend to believe they need -just a little- more than they now have.

 

Or maybe you have kept a thing out of obligation or guilt, even if you never even use it. In that case it is the thought that counts, not keeping the gift or souvenir forever. Take a picture of it before you kiss it goodbye. 

Then, simply release the object with love!

One thing you learn doing this process is how much you actually do have! I kept getting more things because the six or ten I already had got lost in the heap of debris in the back of the drawer. Out of sight, out of mind. So you realize that the difficulty was you didn't know what you had because you didn't see it anymore! 

Did you ever go out shopping just to be in a friendly, orderly, appealing atmosphere? Marie Kondo suggests you set up your storage like a store display. 

 

This skill of the discerning and responding to your joy becomes a new habit and a new way of moving through the world. A way of turning toward a positive instead of resisting a negative. In this way, everything you are surrounded by at home gives you joy. 

I wonder if this transfers also to tidying mental clutter. This is a skill of attitude that could become a habit.

Being grateful with each thing is a key to this power. In fact I realize that a lot of what I kept around me was draining my energy in a subtle way. I wonder how much of the world's problems could be prevented by simply offering commons spaces and systems that are joyful and beautiful in their simplicity. Architecture and systems design for world success, as Bucky asserted. 

 

But only providing a beautiful functional commons without also bringing awareness won't be enough to transform the world. We also have to consider each thing and our feelings around it, and find the harmony in the relationship. Then we may decide to have different things around us. And it need not be avoiding scarcity as much as bringing joy that will guide wise decisions.

"People cannot change their habits without first changing their way of thinking"-Marie Kondo

Say Something

 "I believe that every single event in life happens in an opportunity to choose love over fear."-Oprah Winfrey 

 

It was hard. I don't know why. I am standing around the hardware store, waiting for my paint to mix, and I hear that old song again. It glorifies the old days of slavery in the south with lyrics like "the night they drove old Dixie down, and all the bells were ringing...but they should never have taken the very best"...

I am all for free speech and art, but I'm thinking- this song must come off as hostile to a black shopper, here in the USA. I have HAD it with that song, as well as with those Dixie flags I see on people's cars and apparel. No, it does not mean love for your home place, it means racist hate, pure and simple.

Who does your music, I ask the paint guy. He doesn't know, but I complain about it to him anyway. Getting no response, I go over to the cashier and wait to ask him. 

 

As I wait, a black man walks up to check out. This is a pretty white area so I marvel at the coincidence and take it as a sign. Go ahead, I'm waiting to complain about the music, I tell him. That song must come off as hostile and racist to a black person, I say to him, as we wait, and he affirms to me that it does, indeed.

He checks out and leaves, and I take up the matter with the two cashiers, who tell me this is a Sirius feed, but they do not offer to do anything about it. I wonder if you can order the non racist feed from Sirius. I ask for a manager. All around me all this time in hearing range are ten or so white guys, each with their manly hardware items, but no one says anything to me about it. No one says anything at all.

 

The manager strikes me as a kind and wise fellow who listens and thanks me for speaking up. I tell him to complain to Sirius and that the music was hostile to black shoppers and that it made me uncomfortable too. I thought it should make anyone uncomfortable! 

But it is even more uncomfortable for me to speak up.  I get shaky and sweaty and my heartbeat gets going all fast.  But I'm glad I did it. It helps when we speak up for others, like when men protest in favor of women's rights. Even as a person of the most common color in my neighborhood, (pinkish-orangish), as a person of gender, (guess!), I still found it so hard to get up the courage to say something. At least at this time in that place at least, no one was willing to publicly defend racist lyrics. This is some small progress. No one argued with me, but their silence itself said something.

 

I can only imagine how hard it can be for members of whatever group that are being attacked to complain. And I am filled with admiration for the bravery of all those people in the world living under oppressive regimes who could be killed for speaking up, but do so anyway. If they can, so can we.

"As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world – that is the myth of the atomic age – as in being able to remake ourselves." - Mahatma Gandhi